


if you think it's love (it is)

by hellsreluctantheir



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Dates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29426031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsreluctantheir/pseuds/hellsreluctantheir
Summary: “So, did you ever get a date?” Sam seemed to be very focused on carefully placing his coffee mug on the table without spilling anything. “A real one?”“No,” Castiel said. “I think I’m ok without one, though.”“No!” Sam’s voice came out a little strangled. “No, you- let me take you out.”Castiel took his attention completely off the book he’d been scanning to fix his gaze to Sam, who at least had looked up at him now. Wide-eyed and a little paler than normal. “You want to take me on a date?”That made Sam’s gaze skitter back to the table. “I just feel like you should have one.”
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 52





	if you think it's love (it is)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, sastielers! Here's a gift from me to you. Title from If You Think It's Love by King Princess.

It was three days after the grace-extracting experiment. They had been quiet. Researching, looking for cases. Sam had calmed after the spell failed - for about a day. Since then Castiel had caught him staring in quiet moments, hovering over books with his gaze in middle distance instead of on the pages, chewing his fingernails. When he’d asked was was bothering him, Sam had said nothing. So, he waited. If Sam wanted to tell him something, he would. Eventually. Apparently three days was that eventually.

“I- I’m sorry if this is weird,” was an auspicious start, as he stepped into the library, but Castiel just waited for him to continue. “Dean told me - just mentioned, really - that while you were human you had kind of a… date that wasn’t.”

Which, yes, it probably was a little weird. Castiel was still unsure of what social cues he’d missed or ignored in that particular situation. But none of that was Sam’s fault. “I did,” he confirmed, neutrally.

“So, did you ever get a date?” Sam seemed to be very focused on carefully placing his coffee mug on the table without spilling anything. “A real one?”

“No,” Castiel said. “I think I’m ok without one, though.” 

“No!” Sam’s voice came out a little strangled. “No, you- let me take you out.”

Castiel took his attention completely off the book he’d been scanning to fix his gaze to Sam, who at least had looked up at him now. Wide-eyed and a little paler than normal. “You want to take me on a date?”

That made Sam’s gaze skitter back to the table. “I just feel like you should have one.”

Castiel’s instinct was to push. Past the nerves, and the averted eyes, and the skip he could hear in Sam’s heartbeat. If he pushed, he thought, that might make Sam back off. “Ok,” he said, instead.

“Ok?” The word seemed like it rushed out of Sam’s chest involuntarily, breathy and relieved. “Ok. Great. Would- uh. How about the day after tomorrow?”

It wasn’t like Castiel had plans.

If he had, he would’ve cancelled them.

“How do I know you know what you’re talking about?” he asked Sam the next day, while he was watching him eat breakfast. “What’s the best date you’ve ever been on?”

Sam, to his surprise, flushed a little. “Ok, uh. There was this date I went on at Stanford. And- so you gotta understand it’s like a six hour drive from Palo Alto to LA,” he said, smile already curling the corners of his lips. “And Jess said she wanted to make a trip down, and I wasn’t sure. Twelve hours in a car is a long time, unless we wanted to get a motel or somewhere down there, but she was really into the idea, so… We go. We’d been together, like. Six months? I think.” His eyes had softened, looking into his memories. “Turns out she wanted to drag me to this bookstore she’d gone to with her family. They’d visited her Freshman year, taken a trip down to see the sights and…” He trailed off.

“And?” Castiel prompted.

“It’s called The Last Bookstore,” Sam said, focusing in on Castiel again. “It’s this huge place downtown. Bottoms floor is new books, top floor is all secondhand. Themed rooms, art features, the lot.”

“Sounds like your kind of place,” Castiel said.

“It was,” Sam said. His smile went distant again. “It took me an hour to realise that Jess liked it, sure, she thought it was a great bookstore. But it wasn’t six-hour-drive worth it to her. She just knew it would be to me.”

Castiel nodded, considering it. “That does sound nice.”

“We were so tired driving back I almost crashed the car,” Sam said. “But yeah.”

The next day, to Castiel’s surprise, they started early. Sam drove, did not tell Castiel where they were going. He’d packed a backpack, and didn’t protest when Castiel inspected it - it contained food. sandwiches, fruit, and carrot sticks, a thermos of coffee. Enough for Sam for the day.

“I’m guessing we’ll be out for a while,” he said, zipping it back up.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Unless- if you’re not having a good time just tell me. We can always go back.”

“You’re the one who wanted to take me out, Sam,” Castiel said, calmly. “I’m trusting you to do it.”

But Sam was nervous. Clear in the tension of his hands on the steering wheel, the set of his jaw. That, more than anything else, contributed to a quiet drive. Not uncomfortably - Sam had spent enough of his life on long car rides, and Castiel had certainly learned to bear them since he lost his wings. Sam took occasional sips from the thermos, they listened to local radio stations fade in and out, and watched the Kansas greenery go by. Until, a little before ten in the morning, Sam guided him into a small museum surrounded by short hiking trails.

And it was guided - Sam kept opening doors for him, kept hovering his hand near Castiel’s lower back, watching him out of the corner of his eye. They made it through three rooms - full of life-size dioramas, and informative placards, and really big rocks - before they spoke.

It wasn’t that it wasn’t interesting. A level of information the hovered in-between the levels that Castiel did know - the macro of heaven and the extreme micro of the world he now lived in with the Winchesters. As well as the displays, he watched Sam out of the corner of his eye. He had wondered if he’d linger close the whole time, that hand near the small of his back, a steady presence at his side. But, no, Sam orbits. Sometimes looking at the same displays as Castiel, sometimes across the room. Always aware of him, it seemed.

“So,” Castiel said the next time they felt themselves side by side, looking at a series of miniature log cabins, each in different stages of completion. “If this is supposed to be a bookshop moment, like Jess gave you, why here?”

Sam worried at his lip, cheeks a little flushed. “I don’t know if this is that special, but - and do correct me if I’m wrong, but I hope I’m not - you’ve experienced so much of history from the outside. Just through heaven’s point of view. And then you came down, and you fought with us, and you stayed with us. It made me think you might be a little interested in seeing more things from our perspective.”

“Oh.” Because of course models and dioramas were not just models and dioramas.

“Besides,” Sam said, with a little more confidence. “After the whole molecules discussion it was pretty obvious dinner was a bad idea.” He flashed a quick grin.

Castiel wished he’d brought a flower, like he had when he’d been wrong about it. For some reason it felt like it might’ve jinxed it. Was that a holdover from being human or just from spending so much time with the humans he was with? The same result either way.

Two hours had gone by, spent in equal contemplation of the exhibits and the man who had brought him to see them, when Sam suggested they head back to the car.

“The museum is open until five,” Castiel pointed out.

“We’ve got a location two,” Sam said, “And they close at five as well. We leave now we’ll have a couple of hours once we get there.”

Another three-ish hour drive then. “Using all your ideas on one day?” Castiel asked, moving with Sam towards the exit regardless. “There’s time.”

Sam laughed. “When have you known us to have this many days off in a row?”

It was true. Not just in the always-an-impending-catastrophe way, either. Castiel had been able to tell there was energy building up in Sam when they were in the bunker. That he was healing, but that also meant that a growing part of him was yearning to work again. Maybe planning this had partially been a way to burn off some of that.

Sam pulled open the passenger side door for him.

The set out again. Sam ate some of the food he’d packed for himself one handed - Castiel busied himself helping open and close containers, pouring from the thermos. Watching Sam drive. A shorter drive, but only slightly.

“This is,” Sam said, guiding Castiel towards the entrance, “The Cosmosphere.”

This one - this one Castiel liked better. There was something endearing, something comforting, something familiar about how hard humans strived for flight. And he understood, now, the lack of it. This was something that was too often missed, in heaven. They’d watched humanity grow, obviously, but they ignored how much of it had been under their own power. That the ‘hairless apes’ had taken stone, and steel, and fire, and built themselves wings.

He was staring up an a model of Saturn V when he noticed how closely Sam was watching him.

There was anxiety in his eyes, but also a fondness. A warmth.

Castiel’s chest was warm, too.

They lingered right up until closing time, walking so close as they left that it was easy for Castiel to brush their shoulders together, watch Sam duck his head and smile.

And he’d known. He’d _known_ , as soon as he heard the way Sam’s heart skipped when he’d asked if he could take him out, at every door he’d opened, how he’d been watching Castiel closer than any of the exhibits. Sam opened the door of the car for him again, and Castiel stopped to grip his arm, feel it solid and warm under his palm.

“Thank you for this, Sam,” he said.

Sam’s answering smile was bright, and open, and felt a little like sunshine. “There’s, uh. There’s one more thing. If you want to do it.”

Castiel tilted his head. “Oh?”

“Suns gonna be down in about an hour,” Sam said. “I thought… If you wanted to I thought we could stop and stargaze for a while.”

It sounded romantic.

It was cold, in the December air, but Sam had managed to stow blankets in the car without Castiel noticing. He draped one over the hood, and piled the others on top of them. He didn’t feel the cold, not like Sam did, but the blankets were an excuse to sit closer that completely necessary. Shoulders pressed in together. One ankle thrown over one of Sam’s. They talked, a little. Mostly they stared up at the sky. Sam finished the lukewarm coffee left in the thermos. Castiel listened to him breath, to the beat of his heart.

After a long time, Sam made a slightly apologetic noise, sliding off the hood of the car. “This isn’t great date talk, he said, “but we should get going, and I really need to take a leak before we drive home.” Then he tramped off into the undergrowth off the side of the road.

There weren’t any roses nearby, but Castiel could smell wildflowers still somehow hanging on in the cold. Quietly, he made his way into the dark to pick one, carefully selecting a bloom that had no crushed petals, wasn’t too close to wilting. A brief thought to Dean’s advice, and he removed his tie, opened an extra button on his shirt.

It felt a little ridiculous but when they got inside the car, and the interior light turned on, Sam’s eyes flickered down to the newly exposed skin.

Castiel held out the flower towards him.

Sam took it, hand soft and reverant, grin blooming on his face. “What’s this?”

“For you,” Castiel said. “You took me out, the least I could do is get flowers.”

Sam flushed, gently tucked the flower into one of the buttonholes in his shirt. “Thanks,” he said, so soft it was almost whispered.

They drove.

Sam was clearly exhausted by the time they got back to the bunker, yawning so wide his jaw cracked and then looking shame-faced. “Sorry,” he said.

“Hm,” Castiel said. “Maybe next time it could be one trip out per date, not a marathon.”

He cracked a grin at that. And, after all this time, it was nice to see an exhaustion that felt pleased. Satisfied, not just harrowed. “I’ll keep that in mind, Cas.”

“So.” Castiel paused at the corridor that lead towards the bedrooms, turned to face Sam. Wondered if he should be pushing this far. “There’s a proper way to end a good date, correct?”

Sam’s eyes flickered instantly to Castiel’s lips, which made him feel unaccountably pleased. “That’s ok, Cas,” he said, instead of leaning in. “That’s- that’s more for proper dates, not. This.”

So there was the line. Driving a total of nine hours across Kansas, carefully selected locations that he’d thought Cas would like, sitting shoulders pressed together on the hood of the car. Standing right up against it, but Sam had drawn a line, and this was it.

“This meant something to you,” Castiel said, stepping one foot over. “More than just doing something nice for me.”

“Cas,” Sam said, shaking his head, gaze down, self-deprecating smile. “You don’t have to-“

“I would like it,” Castiel interrupted, stepping closer, second foot over the line, and taking Sam’s hand, “If you let it mean something to me too.”

Sam’s eyes met his, expression disbelieving, almost scared. But he didn’t pull away, didn’t shift as Cas leaned closer. Not all the way. He was sure, he was so sure but- but if he was wrong.

He wasn’t wrong. Sam, breath unsteady, hand tightening around Castiel’s, closed the last of the distance. As kisses went it was gentle. Chaste. All too brief. As Sam drew back a noise of protest slipped out of Castiel’s throat involuntarily; he shifted with him. Sam’s free hand moved to his jaw, guided him into a second kiss, slower and deeper, and that, _that_ was what Castiel wanted. He let his hand splay at Sam’s lower back, drew him in closer, opened his mouth so they could taste each other.

They broke apart eventually, Sam’s thumb stroking up and down the side of Castiel’s hand.

“So,” Castiel said, “Next time, I’m taking you out. Give me some time to plan it.”

Sam ducked his head, but not far enough Castiel couldn’t see his smile. “Ok.”

“I’m going to kiss you again,” he said. “If that’s alright.”

Sam’s smile brightened, and leaned in to meet him.

**Author's Note:**

> You can talk to me on [tumblr](https://hellsreluctantheir.tumblr.com/).


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